The question comes to every candidate: Will you raise or lower taxes; and for whom and why ?

Unless a candidate is ignorant, dishonest or indifferent toward public service, how can they actually answer this question without doing some real accounting first. To be honest in public service, the cost of waste, fraud and abuse in government has to be answered first. This means that we must thoroughly understand the operational cost of government .When accounting for this, which I personally believe is about 2/3rds dysfunctional, then the answer would be that every tax payer is paying3 times as much tax as they should.

The next part of the answer requires the determination of the taxes collected as actually being Constitutional according to Amendment 16.

Without accounting for the above first, would a candidate actually be considered competent in serving the people ? So fundamentally, in terms of tax issues, candidates should be scrutinized closely, as it more than likely will cost you money that most don't have or care to spare.

So if a candidate claims that they will tax the rich more to pay for needed programs for all, consider are they ignorant or dishonest? And if a candidate claims that they will give tax breaks to corporations, but leave you out, should it be obvious from where they are coming from?

Considering the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government haven't genuinely addressed your tax issues as described in the above, perhaps the question should be to candidates is: What is your plan for tax reform?